The 92-Year-Old Woman Who Is Still Shaking Up Wall Street

BU Law professor Tamar Frankel is considered the intellectual godmother of the fiduciary rule.

Most people measure patience in hours, weeks or months. Tamar Frankel measures it in decades.

Ms. Frankel, a law professor at Boston University, is the intellectual godmother of the fiduciary rule, a regulation from the US Department of Labor requiring anyone being paid to provide investment advice on a retirement account to act in the best interest of the client. At the age of 92, Ms. Frankel still commutes to work five days a week, teaches two courses—and is unfazed that the Labor Department announced on Nov. 27 that it would delay implementing key parts of the fiduciary rule until July 2019.

After all, Ms. Frankel has been advocating that brokers should put their clients first for more than 40 years. What’s another 18 months?